Status Update 07.20.2008
Posted by CCIE Journey on Jul 20, 2008
I have almost made it through day 8 of the internetwork expert cod. This weekend was a total wash study wise though. Friday night we worked till around 2:00am doing a SQL server migration, which meant I slept most of Saturday away after being woken up a few times for work related things dealing with the migration.
On Friday my wife had her weekly doctor’s apointment and they advised her that if the baby doesn’t come by August 5th, they will induce labor. This is kind of my fault lol. Since I am 6′4 I guess the baby decided he would be best served to start growing like his dad. The doctor scheduled a growth sonogram for this coming Wednesday. Maybe they will decide they should just induce my wife this week based on his size ;).
I also did received my full Blended Learning Solution from IP Expert. Thanks goes out to Mike Down over at IP Expert. I will have to start going through that material as well. I am kind of stuck in neutral right now though waiting on the wife :).
One thing still on the table my wife really wants me to look into is taking a five day bootcamp. I am still uncommited to this. The cost alone is high. The cost to travel right now is insane, with fuel costs the way they are as well. The full benefit to cost ratio still doesn’t seem to add up to me. Plus with all the material I have on cod the current cost of everything just doesn’t seem to make sense.
Hopefully this week I can get a few more posts up, along with a technology post I am currently studying as well. Better yet maybe there will be a mini me in the house this week I can start to corrupt, err teach about all the worldy things to teach him. How about we start at Disney World…
HSRP and You Johnny Update
Posted by CCIE Journey on Jul 16, 2008
If anyone remembers my original post on our HSRP setup I wasn’t able to fully test it at that time. Well last night the routing in our MPLS provider’s cloud seemed to take a little bit of a tumble for one of our facilities. The tunnel interface went right down and the routing went over to the frame relay backup network. It is nice not to get a call at 1:30am 
We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. -Marcel Proust
Posted by CCIE Journey on Jul 15, 2008
I did have a post to go with this, but I wasn’t feeling it so just decided to keep the quote because it fits this whole mess of a certification 
Status Update 07.15.2008
Posted by CCIE Journey on Jul 15, 2008
Completed items
- Day 7 of cod
- No labs were completed, no time
Goals for this week
- Day 8 of the cod
- Start the core lab workbook
I must admit I skipped through some of day 7 of the cod. I moved right through the classes on authentication for OSPF, RIP, EIGRP. I have them down pretty much now. I am starting to get close to completing the cod which is starting to feel like an accomplishment itself with everything else that is going on.
I am going to start out building up my core topics with lab workbook III this time instead of the full workbook II labs. I need to build up my core topics before even thinking about multicast, qos, ntp, etc…
Private VLANs Revisited By Petr Lapukhov over on IE Blog
Posted by CCIE Journey on Jul 15, 2008
A very good read for a topic that seems to get very little exposure. I know in the Cisco Press books I have read Private Vlans were only covered by a few pages here and there. I am sure if you work for a large ISP or network provider you are very familiar already with this topic, but for us little network people this a nice read…
Due to the non-decreasing interest to the post about Private VLANs, I decided to make another one, more detailed – including a diagram and verification techniques.
To begin with, look at the concept of VLAN as a broadcast domain. What Private VLANs (PVANs) do, is they split the domain into multiple isolated broadcast subdomains. It’s a nesting concept – subVLANs inside a VLAN. Next, as we know, Ethernet VLANs are not allowed to communicate directly with each other - they require a L3 device to forward packets between broadcast domains. The same concept applies to PVLANS - since the subdomains are isolated at level 2, they need to communicate using an upper level (L3/packet forwarding) entity - such as router. However, there is difference here. Regular VLANs usually correspond to a single IP subnet. When we split VLAN using PVLANs, hosts in different PVLANs still belong to the same IP subnet, but now they need to use a router (L3 device) to talk to each other (for example, by using local Proxy ARP). In turn, router may either permit or forbid communications between sub-VLANs using access-lists. Why would anyone need Private VLANs? Commonly, this kind of configurations arise in “shared” environments, say ISP co-location, where it’s beneficial to put multiple customers into the same IP subnet, yet provide a good level of isolation between them.
New CCIE forum over at IEOC.com
Posted by CCIE Journey on Jul 10, 2008
Internetwork Expert has opened a new forum/community that replaces their current forums. You can never get enough online community options.
In order to provide the best possible service to our customers, and to the CCIE community as a whole, we have implemented a new combination web forum / mailing list server as a free service. Internetwork Expert’s Online Community (http://www.IEOC.com) officially replaces our previous Discussion Forum as a place where you can discuss both general CCIE topics for all tracks as well as Internetwork Expert specific products.
IEOC allows you to create new posts and reply to other posts like a normal web forum, but you can also read and submit posts via email! For example if you email ccie-rs@ieoc.com your message will be sent our to all users subscribed to the email feed, plus posted on the web forum as viewable and searchable content. Personally this is my favorite feature of the new server, as I dread checking web forums daily, but I am completely obsessed with checking my email every five minutes.
Status Update 07.10.2008
Posted by CCIE Journey on Jul 10, 2008
Completed items
- Day 6 of the cod
- Some Multicast labs
Goals for the rest of this week
- Day 7 of the cod
- Sleep
Well my wife officially hits 9 months of being pregnant this Sunday. That means the pressure is on now for sure. The baby’s room is pretty much done with the exception of having to put his crib together this weekend. So I am not sure what is in the cards for finishing my goals for this week. Atleast we got all his 0-3 month clothes washed so he has something to wear when coming home :). All the bags are packed and everything is ready to go for the hospital, now I guess we are on his time… Where do you even start out with a son? All I am used to is Disney Princesses 
My lab date is all set and ready to go as well. I am keeping that day a secret though until I see how studying goes for the first few weeks with a newborn in the house. I would like to move it up a bit if that becomes possible. I would like to show up in CCIE Pursuit’s lab, but he is taking it in San Jose.
Fall Back Bridging Tutorial over on cciecandiate.com
Posted by CCIE Journey on Jul 9, 2008
I just finished the bridging section of the cod yesterday and was going to do a write up on it, but Barooq has his up on cciecandidate. It is a good write up, and worth reading just to get a brief overview.
Bridging is an obscure topic in CCIE R&S study.
It can be divided in three types1) IRB (Integrated Routing and Bridging)
2) CRB (Concurrent Routing and Bridging
3) Fall back bridgingIRB is discussed in Lab 3 of internetworkExpert labs.
Basically IRB and CRB are generally used on routers to bridging different VLAN domains. If IRB is used, we can route IP over these bridged interfaces. The topic that is least discussed is Fall Back Bridging that we configure on switches. It is basically for non-IP traffic, and thats why chances of it appearing on the LAB are slim.
Perspective…
Posted by CCIE Journey on Jul 6, 2008
I happened across CCIE Pursuit’s post today and was shocked at what I read. You can read his whole post here. Sometimes I sit and wonder if all this time I take away from my family really worth it? Today I skipped a picnic at my wife’s mom’s house. There are alot of times I skip little things with the family and so forth. It just got me thinking about everything. I will crawl ahead, but I am starting to think I will skip less time with everyone…
I wish the best for his wife and children in their time ahead.
Cisco unveils practical CCDE exam over on Network World
Posted by CCIE Journey on Jul 6, 2008
I missed this post last week, but caught it from my igoogle home page. It is a interesting read.There is a good point made asking can you really test someone’s design ability on with a computer based test?
At the beginning of this year, Cisco launched the written test for its Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE) program, which lets IT pros demonstrate expertise in network infrastructure design principles and fundamental concepts.
The missing piece – until now – was the practical exam. How would Cisco create a test to objectively measure network design, which some would argue is far from being an exact science?
